Google reported a second-quarter profit of $3.42 billion, or $4.99 a share, compared with a profit of $3.23 billion, or $4.77 a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue, minus traffic acquisition costs, was $12.67 billion, up from $11.1 billion in the year-earlier period. Analysts polled by FactSet on average were expecting the Internet giant to report a profit of $6.23 a share on revenue of $12.32 billion.

CFO Pichette says, “I know there’s been a lot of speculation out there been in essence, what we have is great opportunities in front of us and we don’t comment on. YouTube it serves as a powerful starting point for advertisers for looking to anchor their brand campaigns online.”

Question on Google’s long term projects, such self-driving cars or Google X, and how Google thinks about profitability.

Pichette says it depends on the kind of project.

“You have a thesis, and that thesis is basically tested on a regular basis through the gating of the funding that they get and in some cases like self driving cars obviously multi-year and we have a couple of other projects that are of that nature where it would take we think of kind of half decade, sometimes even a bit longer before you know you can get kind of real momentum on revenue and profitability.”

CFO Pichette says, “We have this amazing opportunity to actually look around the world to look for the best engineers and we promised ourselves that given the bar is very, very high, when we do find people that fit the culture and that we think will actually do a great contribution and be great Googlers we actually don’t hesitate and we hire them.”

Question on Google Fiber, the company’s high-speed Internet network that’s being rolled out in a growing number of U.S. cities.

Pichette says “There’s been a lot of improvements and cost reductions and technology components all through the fiber network but also in the way we build it.” He also stressed that Google’s strategy is “to build to demand.”

“Unlike the typical overbuilder, actually we have a very different kind of business model and thesis for than we do work closely with each city to streamline the process that keeps, again, the cost of construction way down.”

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst asks “any example of a non-search initiative where you’ve invested heavily over the last maybe three, four, five years where the ROI today exceeds your threshold.”

Pichette responds: “We have a whole host of products where, just think of this Play, think of YouTube, think of maps.” He also mentions Gmail, Chrome, Android, “that actually gives you distribution, that gives you a great infrastructure on which kind of that fuels the searches and the advertising. … I think we have so many areas that we get actually terrific returns.”

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